Representations of the male figure in art are far less common than works depicting women. A long history of straight men dominating the art world has led to many images of winsome women, but fewer of beautiful men (I’ve written on this subject before; if you’d like to read more about the lack of male figures in art check it out here).

Every Female Gaze Friday I will post a woman-created work of art depicting a man—one small act to reverse the male gaze! Not all images will be provocative, many will be nonsexual or even disturbing. Hopefully this will be a way of learning more about women artists (as well as looking at dudes)!

This week we’ll look at a series of paintings by feminist artist Alice Neel:

Alice Neel, Ballet Dancer, 1950, oil on canvas, 20″ x 42″

Alice Neel, John Perreault, 1972, oil on canvas, 38″ x 63.5″

Alice Neel, George Arce, 1959, oil on canvas, 36″ x 25″

Alice Neel, T.B. Harlem, 1940, oil on canvas, 762 x 762 mm.

Alice Neel is one of my personal favorites. I find her work very inspiring, both for the content and for her technique. Over the past summer I interned with the Luce Foundation Center at the American Art Museum, and had the pleasure of seeing Neel’s Self Portraitevery day in the adjacent hall of the National Portrait Gallery. A very impressive painting! Her thick lines and beautiful brushstrokes combined with her unique perspective on the human figure make her, in my opinion, one of the most notable painters of the 20th century.

I love the fact that Neel painted so many men. And not only that, she painted many men of color. In a world where art history classes are whitewashed and masculinized to such an extent, prominent artists like Neel remind me that work like this did exist (this is another opportunity to link to Medieval POC, a blog focusing on people of color in European art history. Gotta love the tag line, “Because you wouldn’t want to be historically inaccurate”)

And not only did Neel paint men, she painted sensual portraits of men. There is something undeniably elegant and sexual about her images of the ballet dancer or of John Perreault (see both above). The elongated limbs and the placement of the models so you see so much of their bodies, Neel’s portraits are unapologetically focused on serving the female gaze.

The fourth painting shown here, T.B. Harlem, is one of Neel’s most well-known work. This intimate portrait of her lover’s brother, Carlos Negrón, shows a young man of 24 suffering from tuberculosis. His bandaged chest comes from a thoracoplasty, a procedure in which doctors removed ribs in order to collapse and rest the TB infected lung. This portrait of Negrón elongates the figure, and reflects martyred Christ imagery.

This is far from all of Neel’s work. There are many more portraits of men and women, and I would recommend reading more about her life here. She led a fascinating existence.

You can see more of Neel’s work here. Check back on Fridays for more images of men by women. And feel free to suggest works of art or artists in the comments!

Join the RIT Fine Arts Studio program in viewing student work from all levels: freshmen through graduate. Explore the studios, meet the artists, and discover new artwork! My studio will be open; please stop by and say hello!

Artist Micol Hebron’s current project, Gallery Tally, counts the gender ratios of art gallery rosters. This crowd-sourced projects has artists count the number of men and women represented by a gallery and create posters representing those numbers.

MFA programs are 65% to 75% women, but the current gallery system is 70% men. Actual quotes from gallerists asked by Hebron about gender ratios in their galleries:

“Women do not have the same drive or passion for their art as men do — they are not willing to die for their passions.”

“Women are not as prominent in the art world because they become mothers.”

“We don’t have that many women artists, but we do have a gay artist — does that count?”

And some bonus Facebook comments from the Hyperallergic interview (If you couldn’t guess, these are both older, white men):

It’s sad to see so many people who, even when confronted with cold, hard facts, are completely unable to see things from another point of view. Bonus points to these guys for pulling out the good old “But maybe men are just better!” argument, as well as shoehorning in a complaint about political correctness and that oh so scary feminist agenda. Watch out men! Feminists are everywhere and they’re coming for youuuuuuuu!

Museums have long been seen as the keepers of culture. They are romanticized, seen as places for learning and spiritual quests, and are considered to represent a national identity. However, museums are often not just a reflection of culture, but one of the many authorities that interpret and construct cultural narratives. These narratives are not necessarily all-encompassing or truthful. Museums are susceptible to the same cultural influences as their communities, and often present imperfect, sexist, racist, and homophobic interpretations of history. Art museums exist as a highly gendered space, and this is reflected in their architecture, included artists, and subject matter of the exhibited artwork.

Art museum exteriors have long been coded as highly masculine. This begins with who is allowed to design the museum, as men dominate the world of museum architecture. Most creators of the enormous, contemporary facades trendy with today’s museums are white men. Even in architecture firms including women partners and employees, the firm is presented as male. Because of this, the public facades of art museums are, for the most part, created by men. Additionally, because museums often use monumental scale to signify power, tradition, and status, they are perceived as masculine due to the conflation of monumental scale with masculinity.[1]

Zaha Hadid, one of the few women architects well-known in the field of museum architecture, Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, 2003

In the late 1800s the French bourgeois elites embraced the museum as a monument of their cities and of themselves. This resulted in museums becoming more monumental and much more lavish. Museum construction was directly tied to the appearance of those in power, which relates to contemporary ideas of power and monumental masculinity. One Marseille city councilor advocating for museum construction funds said, “the visitor going through the rooms, the gardens, the walks, must be able to say: This is truly the work of a great city!”[2] The elite wanted greatness, and they conflated greatness with monumental architecture referencing times of glory and past masters. Today’s standard art museum entrance still references the style developed as a result of these desires, featuring a grand entrance complete with ceremonial stairway as well as inscriptions of the names of artistic “geniuses,” always white men. Upon approaching the museum, a visitor is immediately influenced by the size and the presentation of great men in art.[3]

The interior space of museums allows the artwork to set the tone. Rooms upon rooms of white male artists makes it very clear: women and people of color do not create great art worthy of the museum. The Guerrilla Girls’ infamous 1989 poster featuring a reclining female nude wearing an aggressive-looking gorilla mask asks, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female”.[4] This leads directly into the next gendered issue of art museum collections; nearly all of the figures depicted are women.

Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?

Why are women always the ones being looked at? This question is addressed in Laura Mulvey’s influential article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in which Mulvey argues that films are constructed with the idea of the viewer as male. Because of this, women are consistently depicted as objects for the male gaze.[5]

The male gaze has a strong presence in art museums. If all of the creators are men, and the depicted figures are women, we are more likely to identify with the creator of the work who existed and worked in the same space we now occupy as viewers. According to Carol Duncan in her article, “The MoMA’s Hot Mamas”, “The collection’s recurrent images of sexualized female bodies actively masculinize the museum as a social environment. Silently and surreptitiously, they specify the museum’s ritual of spiritual quest as a male quest.”[6] By including primarily male artists and showing mainly female nudes, art museums are placing museum visitors in the role of masculine creator and viewer. This enforces the initial reading of the museum exterior as a masculine space by showing the interior as a space for the male gaze.

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52, oil on canvas, 6′ 3 7/8″ x 58″

An ideal example of how museums indicate gender roles of viewer and those being viewed is found in the placement of Willem De Kooning’s Woman I in the MoMA’s Modern Art collection. Woman I is a male-created painting of a woman. With violent and suggestive brushstrokes, this painting is seen as “vulgar, sexual, and dangerous.”[7] With references to powerlessness stemming from the mother and even vagina dentata, Woman I makes it clear that great Modern Art is born from building up and tearing down women. The act of painting, of depicting a person using your own point of view, is an act of power. Visitors learn from the work they view who has power and who does not. By placing Woman I at the entrance of the Modern Art rooms MoMA is informing the visitor that women are looked at while men are the creators and the ones who look.[8]

New bird oil paintings! 6″ x 6″ on panel with gold leaf. Three parrots and a bluejay.

Finally posting some new bird paintings! Parrots have been popular lately. They’re incredibly fun to paint with their bright feathers and intelligent expressions.

Of this bunch, the orange parrot is a commission, the upper right green parrot is my half of an art trade, and the bluejay is headed to an exhibit of small works (more on that soon!)

The lower left parrot is still available! This piece is titled “Green Parrot Beauty Shot” and is currently for sale in RIT’s Shop One² for $65.

Me and my flock!

The goldfinch peeking out on the right is shown in progress, and was also made for an art trade. I’ll post some of the great art trades I’ve received soon! I’m lucky to be friends with so many talented artists.

Representations of the male figure in art are far less common than works depicting women. A long history of straight men dominating the art world has led to many images of winsome women, but fewer of beautiful men (I’ve written on this subject before; if you’d like to read more about the lack of male figures in art check it out here).

Every Female Gaze Friday I will post a woman-created work of art depicting a man—one small act to reverse the male gaze! Not all images will be provocative, many will be nonsexual or even disturbing. Hopefully this will be a way of learning more about women artists (as well as looking at dudes)!

This week we’ll look at a series of erotic paintings by feminist artist Joan Semmel:

Joan Semmel, Intimacy-Autonomy, 1974, oil on canvas, 50″ x 98″

Joan Semmel, Erotic Yellow, 1971-1973, oil on canvas, 72″ x 72″

Joan Semmel, Untitled, 1971, oil on canvas, 70″ x 80″

Joan Semmel, Flip-Flop, 1971, oil on canvas

Feminist artist Joan Semmel created the first of the Erotic Series in the early 1970s. Her highly sexualized images depict men and women as equals, transforming their bodies into sensual landscapes. This series often focused on a lounging nude seen from the model’s point of view, effectively drawing the viewer into the image, while later paintings would take a more voyeuristic point of view.

As a first-wave feminist, Semmel worked to free the female nude from a patriarchal history. She said of her work, “My intention has been to subvert the tradition of the passive female nude”. Semmel does this well, addressing cultural obsessions with women’s youth and beauty through imagery including mannequins and self portraiture. Her nudes are equals, and are clearly far more than objects of the male gaze.

Semmel’s work is incredibly inspiring for a number of reasons, including her skillful use of color and composition, as well as her unique depiction of the male nude.

You can see more of Semmel’s work here. Check back on Fridays for more images of men by women. And feel free to suggest works of art or artists in the comments!

My senior exhibition is quickly approaching and I’m working on finishing the pieces that will be included. These are exciting, if stressful, times!

Small panel paintings for the senior show. There will be around fifteen panels total.

Our exhibition is titled e•gress: Exit the Basement,to symbolize the ten fine art undergraduate seniors graduating from RIT (and our studio basements!) and moving on to new challenges. The show runs from April 9, 2014 – April 19, 2014 with an opening reception on April 12 from 6-9 pm. It is held at RIT’s Gallery r at 100 College Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607. Check out our event page here!

I created “Parrot in a Tree” as a donation to a silent auction for RESTORE (formerly Rape Crisis Service) and the V-Day International Spotlight campaign. RESTORE provides crisis intervention and support services to women, children, and men who are survivors of sexual assault and their significant others.

“Cardinal” is a commission for a person who saw my bird paintings in RIT’s Shop One² (a fine art and craft gallery representing RIT affiliated artists as well as my favorite place to buy birthday presents on campus). I have eight bird paintings on display at Shop One² at the moment. I’ll post pictures of the set up soon! It’s exciting to have work for sale in a physical location.

I have one more bird painting in the works (another commissioned piece!). As a reminder, if you’d like your own feathery friend you can commission a unique work of art through my Etsy store.